Except this RC1 update, every release since around January is open source. There is probably a testing reason behind it, also it's not mandatory.
Nice from a 10 post account to ask for caution, but John most probably won't spread any malware considering the amount of work he put into this project.
Having the source code published, as it is the idea behind section 6 of AGPL used by previous versions, would remove those probabilities.
No need to take the word from a 10 post account as advice (or a Terminator movie character with negative karma for that matter) just read and compile the software that can potentially run your money. Tweaking it to fit your needs.
Don't take me wrong, I like the idea of Vanillacoin, I have some, and I am curious to see ZeroTime concept tested in the real world, I might be a little frustrated for not being able to run RC1 on my linux box and be part of the testing group, that's all.
Taking John's negative trust rating into a statement regarding a closed source RC version of a vanillacoin wallet is pretty much pointless. I would also think that for John, who invested so much (both time and money) into the project (just look at his FPGA rig and the full time development he is doing and count with the avarage developer/programmer fees) it wouldn't be worth to spread a malware which gets noticed after 10 minutes and would result in VNL dropping to 0 and the project ending. Obviously always take care with anything that is closed source, there are certain virus scan application (ex. Virustotal) which one can use before downloading anything.
Yeah I see that you might be curious and/or frustrated, but John just stated it on the forums (
https://talk.vanillacoin.net/topic/206/version-0-3-4-rc1-release/2) that the private branch will soon be merged with the public one and the paper will also get an update. The paper just got tweeted out, so I guess the first one will be soon here also. Paper:
https://github.com/john-connor/papers/blob/master/incentive.pdf